San Francisco, USA — January 7, 2007

Creative Commons today announced that generous support from a variety of key technology companies — including Microsoft, Mozilla, Digital Garage, Yahoo!, Macrovision, Red Hat, DivX, Tucows and Second Life — pushed Creative Commons’ fundraising campaign to an extraordinary success. In combination with the proceeds from the Wired Benefit Concert, other significant corporate contributions from Google and Sun announced earlier in the campaign, and contributions from Ariel Capital Management, Brave New Films, Current TV, and Wiki-How, these new contributions combined to push the total amount raised to close to $500,000 — more than 1.6x the original target of $300,000.

Notably, the largest corporate contributions have come from Mozilla and Microsoft.

Microsoft’s contribution is the corporation’s second to Creative Commons and follows the release in June 2006 of the Microsoft Office CC licensing plug in, which allows people to easily apply a Creative Commons license to their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Mostly recently, it joined with Google and Yahoo! to release a joint sitemap protocol under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

“Creative Commons aims to advance innovative thinking about copyright in our information-based society,” said Tom Rubin, Associate General Counsel of Microsoft. “By providing new ideas that leverage the flexibility of copyright, Creative Commons has pioneered solutions that benefit both creators and the public. Microsoft is pleased to support programs that strive to respect intellectual property rights while benefiting creators, consumers and society at large.”

Mozilla has been a long time supporter of Creative Commons. A Creative Commons search option in the pull-down search menu within all versions of Mozilla Firefox has enabled more than 80 million people to easily locate intellectual property available under a Creative Commons license.

“Creative Commons has provided a trusted framework for the exchange and flow of information assets online,” said Christopher Beard, vice president of marketing and product management at Mozilla. “We’re extremely pleased to continue our support of a fellow public benefit organization that has established itself as a leader in shaping the future of the Internet.”

Yahoo! and Red Hat were also second time contributors, while Digital Garage, Macrovision, Second Life, DivX and Tucows contributed to the San Francisco based non-profit for the first time. Many of these companies have also made important technical contributions to Creative Commons as well. Yahoo, for example, has developed a search portal that filters results on Creative Commons licenses. And since its launch, Second Life and Creative Commons have worked together to assure that the rights to content created in Second Life remain with the author – not the company. Second Life has also become an important forum for debates surrounding Creative Commons and the global digital commons. Most recently it was the platform used for Lawrence Lessig to publicly announce his retirement as Creative Commons Chairman — passing a virtual torch to CC’s new chairman, the Japanese venture capitalist, Joi Ito.

“Our community of authors, scientists, creators and educators has made Creative Commons the success it has become,” CEO Lawrence Lessig commented. “But it is an extraordinary reward to see that success recognized by some of the most important Internet technology companies. We, like they, build infrastructure for the digital age. They make moving bits easier; we make moving the rights associated with those bits easier as well.”

About Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various organizations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public. For general information, visit https://creativecommons.org

Corporate Contacts:

Microsoft
Jason Matusow
jasonma@microsoft.com

Mozilla
Alex Guerra
Senior Account Executive
aguerra@ar-edelman.com

Digital Garage
Yoshito Funabashi
pr@garage.co.jp

Yahoo
Kiersten Hollars
Corporate Communications
Kiersten@yahoo-inc.com

Macrovision
Julia Hughes
Public relations
jhughes@macrovision.com

Red Hat, Inc.
Kerri Catallozzi
Corporate COmmunications Coordinator
kcatallo@redhat.com

DivX
Tom Huntington
thuntington@divxcorp.com

Tucows
Leona Hobbs
Communication Manager
lhobbs@tucows.com

Second Life
Cory Ondrejka
CTO Linden Lab
cory@secondlife.com

Wired
Perri Dorset
Executive Director, Communications
Perri_dorset@condenast.com

Google, INC.
Megan Quinn
meganq@google.com

SUN Microsystems
Andreas Schwarz
andreas.schwarz@sun.com

wikiHow
Jack Herrick
Founder
wiki@wikihow.com

Current TV
Joel Hyatt
CEO
Current Media
118 King St.
San Francisco, CA 94107

Creative Commons Contact:

Melissa Reeder
Development Co-ordinator
melissa@creativecommons.org
415 946 3068

Press Kit
https://creativecommons.org/presskit